OMGJeremy

Panicked Missive Direct from Spider Hell

I sit here, perched on the edge of my seat, ready to flee at a moment’s notice. Every shadow seems suspicious, every small movement is noticed, every slight breeze is magnified, and every eye floatie causes great alarm in my mind. I am normally a very pensive person, yes, although it may be mostly masked by an unnaturally calm exterior. I don’t know being as I am not often on the outside looking in at myself. Cricket Cat just snuck up on me and her whisker touched my arm and I jumped up and shouted JESUS SAVE ME! Judging by how fast she ran away, I scared her as much as she scared me. While I am normally on edge, I am not normally on THIS MUCH of an edge. What has gotten me to be this way? I will tell you. I saw a spider in this room, and I can’t find it again.

I do not hate spiders. I think that they are greatly misunderstood by many people. I appreciate their hunting prowess and the fact that they eat other annoying pests, even other spiders sometimes! Their webs are beautiful and spiders probably don’t mean us any harm if only because we are much too large to hunt. That being said, spiders totally freak me out. I believe it is the way they move and the way they appear right next to me as if by some vile dark magic. I don’t kill spiders. I generally just leave the room, or get the boyfriend to trap and release them. I do not wish to murder these splendid creatures. I could never get that close anyway.

My method of choice: the glass cup with an old Christmas Card slid underneath.

I like to live my life by the motto “out of sight, out of mind.” It works very well for me except in the instance of spiders. Once I have seen one, as soon as it gets out of my sight, it is ALL I can think about. As much as it really pains me to see them, and to see their horrible legs moving the way they do, I would much rather know where this eight-legged enemy is at all times because if I do not – the chances increase dramatically that it will end up on me. If a spider even gets within three feet of me, I become nauseated. I would probably throw up if one got on me again, and I am not really a puker by nature.

This house I am currently living in is spidery, although it must be noted that it is not the spideriest home in which I have lived. But I have noticed that the spider menace comes in waves. In Spring, we had these superfast light green spiders running in my direction. Sometimes as many as four in a night would plague me. I was a horrible mess. Finally, I had to man up and trap a spider on my own (because it had tripped on the ceiling and fallen right on my desk – if it had been six inches more to the west it would have fallen on my head) and release it outside. The freed arachnid ran right over a four leaf clover in the yard and coincidentally, we were spider-free for two solid months.

Out with the incredibly fast old and in with the horrible sneaky new.

The seasons are starting to change, however, and we move into late summer. And with a new seasonal weather shift comes a new flood of a certain kind of spider. This one is black and sort of tough looking. It is a spider with which you would not want to fuck, my friends. It apparently did not get the memo that the God of Spiders sent out after it showed me the four leaf clover of peaceful tidings. This new black spider is a runner, but thankfully it is not as fast as the green cheetah spider, nor is it as reckless in where it goes. I am not sure if this is the same scary spider that we keep releasing, or if it is an entire family, all sisters perhaps. It is hard for me to believe that this spider was not born two months ago and that’s why it doesn’t know to spare this house. Although, judging from its appearance, it sprang fully formed from the loins of Satan. That would also explain why it would be violating peace treaties.

I feel that it is also important to note that while I have been trying to accurately identify the kinds of spiders that are making their ways in the world, my world, right in front of my very eyes, my twitchiness has increased a billionfold. Of course, I could have just illustrated this article with MS Paint Works of me screaming with little asterisks all over me, the asterisks here representing our subject, but I must be a scientist somewhere inside. I like to know what exactly I am dealing with, and I have discovered that it is Yellow Sac Spider and Parson Spider. The yellow one terrifies me more but it turns out that Parson is a Biter. OH THANK GOD I AM SO GLAD THAT I KNOW THIS NOW.

When the asterisks become sentient, this will certainly be my reality.

I have been trying to psycho-analyze myself and discover the source of my Spider Problem. I guess I have had several dire happenings occur throughout my life that involved them. One of my earlier memories, in fact, is of being three to five years old and playing in the creek in my parents’ front yard. As I waded, my foot slipped into a hole (assumed to be a crawdad hole) and when I looked down, my entire leg was swarming with baby spiders. I screamed and flailed, stopping, dropping, rolling in the water until they were all off of me. Of course, I don’t remember seeing the spiders come off in the water, nor do I really know if it is normal to have a spider nest located underwater, so I may have been hallucinating. I used to eat yard mushrooms when I was little, a fact which horrified my mom when I told her decades later, so I may have been having a “bad trip.” BAD TRIPS STICK WITH YOU, MANNNN.

Another time, when I was perhaps seven years old, I discovered a small spider in my parents’ bedroom. I called for my brother, who was nine years older than I am and still is today, to come and destroy it for me. Being a teenager on the telephone at the time, and also generally uncooperative, he refused to help me. So I decided to kill the spider myself, crushing it in a tissue. After all, even though I was only seven, I was still very much larger than it was. I took the opportunity when it came, and felt like a hero. Then of course I saw it running up my arm. It had somehow evaded crushing death and was going to take its revenge on a punk ass little human girl. I screamed, cried, had an enormous fit all alone, and emerged from battle far more traumatized than I had ever been before. That spider event basically gave me Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. I still have never recovered. … Yes, I AM saying that being around a spider is like going to war for eight months.

Ugh. Within the past two minutes, I have spazzed out at a stray hair falling onto my arm, started with surprise and terror at about five dark spots on the wood floor (all part of the natural grain of the wood and they have been there forever), and twice, the exposed light fixture wires in the nearby kitchen (it is under construction) resembled enormous spider legs, causing my heart to stop. I think I should seek attention from an eye doctor, but I don’t think there is much to do about eye floaties. And if the floaties turn out to be eye spiders, like I strongly suspect, I really don’t think they can do much about THAT either. My eyes are full of tiny eye spiders, god it has to be true. They itch now. They feel too big for my sockets.

Where did that spider go?? I saw it descend from its string from a curtain and then go from the floor onto the futon, where I had been sitting comfortably. But then it DISAPPEARED. It may be nesting inside of the mattress. It may be laying a thousand egg sacs in there. I would drag my futon mattress into the street and set fire to it right now but that would certainly cause the spider to get on my arm or shirt or something. I will probably wind up doing what I always do: lock myself in the bathroom and cry for a while.